One of the most important factors in golfing is hitting the ball correctly with the golf club to ensure the ball will travel where desired and not hook or slice to send the ball in an undesirable location. To get the ball to travel where desired the head of the golf club must impact the ball in the center or “sweet spot” on the face of the club. It is often difficult to determine if the ball is struck in the optimal location on the head of a club, and the trajectory of the ball provides some indication of where the club made contact with the ball but it does not provide a positive identification of the contact point on the head of the club. Several patents have been issued that try to address providing feedback to the user on where the ball made contact with the head of a golf club.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,660,436 issued to E. F. Grossman on Nov. 24, 1953 discloses an indicating disk for a golf club head that is placed on the face of a golf club. When the golf club makes contact with the golf ball, a mark is placed on a sweet spot target that is adhered to the face of the golf club. While this patent provides some feedback on the impact location, it requires an expendable component that is saved or discarded, it does not utilize pins that are magnetically held in a biased position to identify the location of impact
U.S. Pat. No. 3,438,634 issued to E. Roy on Apr. 15, 1969 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,898,389 issued to Plutt on Feb. 6, 1990 disclose an electronic device that is either attached to the head of a golf club or integrated into the head of a golf club that registers and display the point of impact with a golf ball. While these patents disclose detection and display system for indication where the ball and head of the golf club made contact they require a power supply for operation and they do not utilize pins that are magnetically held in a biased position to identify the location of the impact. '389 further only identifies horizontal and no vertical information regarding the impact location.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,730,529 issued to Donofrio on May 1, 1973 discloses a stroke indicating golf club. The golf head includes a plurality of pins that slide within the head of the golf club. While this patent provides for indicating pins the pins only show impact information horizontally across the head of the club and there is not a magnetic field that holds the pins biased in one of two locations on the head of the club. The lack of magnetic field(s) allows the pins to freely move based upon an impact. The frictional system that maintains the pins in position is further prone to wear from repeated use of the golf club.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,979,125 and 4,135,720 issued Sep. 7, 1976 and Jan. 23, 1979 respectively both issued to William E. Lancellotti disclose a golf putter practice device. The device has a metal ball that is held in position by a magnet and when the club makes contact with a golf ball the metal ball is dislodged from the magnet and rolls into a plurality of holes that indicate where the ball made contact with the club. While these patents disclose a detection and display system for indication where the ball and head of the golf club made contact they do not disclose a plurality of pins to identify where the ball made contact with the head of the club, and because there is no retention mechanism such as a magnet in the resting position of the metal ball the information regarding the contact with the ball and the club can be lost when the club is swung.
What is needed is a simple to use golf club to golf ball detection and display means that incorporates magnetically biased pins that allow the identifying pins to exist in a forward or back biased position showing where the club struck the ball. The proposed application provides this function by providing magnetically biased pins that show the impact location of the ball and the head of the golf club.